access_UMUWMeeting4Oct2012Notes

  
   
===============================================================
 Notes from UM Working Group Meeting
 -----------------------------------
 11:00am-12:30pm Thu 4th Oct 2012  9E Meeting Room.
===============================================================
 
 Attendees:
    Lwenming,   I.Campbell,  M.Dix,       S.Wales
    M.Naughton, J. Henrichs, I.Bermous,   Say T Ng,
    A.Sulaiman, P. Steinle (Part),  T.Le (Part)

    Apologies: T. Pugh, R.Bowen, M.Rezny, Y Xiao

 (Apologies to Xiao: Meeting room's phone was 
  not connected, preventing phone-in).

 --------------------------------------------------------------
 Discussion topics

   1) MARS at NCI   2) ACTG meeting    3) Solar Issues
   4) NCI           5) UM Issues       6) R&D
   7) NECTAR        8) Collab          9) Other
 
 --------------------------------------------------------------

1) MARS opendap server on vayu for NWP applications

* Proof of concept, now available for initial testing.
* Implemented through openDAP
* Interaction is through archive and retrieve scripts
* Disk only, with 10TB initial allocation.
* Future capacity yet to be determined.
* MARS at BoM currently holds over 1PB
* May interact with DMF at NCI. 
* Experiment id to be decided.
* Wenming will make initial tests.



2) ACTG: Access Technical Coordination Group.
* Ben Evans and Margaret Kahn of NCI are part of the group.
* Notes from last meeting available on wiki

3) Solar issues
  It was decided to discuss this elsewhere as it is
  not of interest to all attendees.

4) NCI Issues.

i) "dp9" project is now available
  * with 350K Hours of CPU.
  * This should be used consistently through the
   project period (rather than cramming at the end)
  * "dp9" also come with disk quota for /short/dp9.
   mjn is the owner.
  * The project allocation will be reserved for
    Migration group only.
  
ii) ACL : Access control list
    command setfacl [options] <dir>
    is available with much greater capability than
    standard unix permissions.

    Group "accessadm" is to be created to facilitate
    ACL for ~access directory.

iii) 10GB Link BoM <-> NCI
     To be available soon.

iv) Super computer installation
  * On schedule with Mid January 2013 expected general
    availability
  * Handover of new computer room from Builder is
    expected at end of October.
  * Fujitsu aim to have the machine include in top 500 list
    in November.
  * Project allocation applications will make use of existing
    NCI mechanism but evaluation and decision will be done
    by BoM and CSIRO.
  * Training (initially for experienced/suppprt users only) is
    planned for 4th and 5th December.

vi) ACCESSDEV
  * Training/initial setup for this "Access's Server" will
    take place on Mon and Tue 22/23rd Oct for staff from
    CoE, CSIRO and BoM who will be responsible for the
    server's system administration.

  * Application to run on the machine includes:
    -- APACHE, TRAC
    -- ROSE, CYLC, IRIS
    -- MARS (connection to dcc required)
    -- UIs
    -- etc. ect.
  Interested parties invited to give submissions.


5) UM & NWP Components

i) Work on VN8.2 on vayu is continuing.

ii) Recent run with VN8.2 on solar was very very slow.
-- To check if "-O3" was specified together with "-g".

iii) Greg Roff have started to look at vn8.2 SCM.

iv) Martin Dix will start to look at VN8.2 AMIP & GA4
  * CSIRO is interested in new chemistry that is
    available with vn8.2

v) vn8.3 is scheduled for release in Nov 2012.


6) R&D

RMIFDF (#ifdef removal from UM source)
---------------------------------------

 * Write-up on collab wiki have been updated with
   latest updates.

 * Feedback from UK have been positive and approval
   from the UM Board is expected.

 *  It was commented that,  removal of #ifdef will allow
    much more efficient building procedure for the UM

 *  It was suggested that current "pre-build" facility
    of the UM is more flexible that initially thought --
    it will handle #ifdef differences.
    -- Someone to investigate this further.

 
Var 29.1
--------
   - Executable build is underway.
   - Job submission interface have totally changed
   - fcm2.2 is pre-requisite.
 
 FCM2.2
 ------
   - need to study its release notes
   - use "fcm make" instead of "fcm extract" plus
     "fcm build" --> to find out if they are still
     supported.
 
 UM 9.0
 ------
   Future release of UM will increasingly include
   support for ROSE but will continue to be available
   with UMUI support until VN9.0 (expected mid-end 2013)
   which will be ROSE only.

 EndGame
 -------
 * This new dynamics for the UM is in the process of
   becoming available.
 * UKMO is interested for CAWCR to test it and give feedback.
 * This new scheme is expected to give better scaling
   and performance.

 R12 Timing
 ----------
 Curent R12 operation run at BoM is 22 minutes slower
 than required. Improved performance is urgently required.
 -- To test using vn7.9/8.0/8.2
 -- Perhaps turning on I/O server can help.
 -- It was suggested that vn8.0 may be the most appropriate
    version due to its greater stability. It should be looked\
    at first before other versions.

7) NECTAR

 i) ACCESS-C is now running on vayu
    -- Documentation is available on access wiki

 ii) Xiao is setting up access-G N512, 4Dvar and will
     use cylc as scheduler.

 Work on ROSE and CYLC
 ---------------------

 Latest update (July2012) is available on vayu.

* Will be used for running Climate  models.

* use of "fcm make" not tested yet.

* Ian Campbell is setting up coupled model runs
using ROSE and CYLC with UM components from UMUI (vn7.3).
Demo of current status to made to interested parties
after the meeting.

* The ROSE version of coupled model eliminates manual
editing of scripts, namelist etc.

* Next stage is to move to new access server and
to try out building using "fcm make"

* Next update of ROSE will be made under "Git" and
"open-source" licence.


8) UKMO Collaboration

* No update yet from UKMO on latest CAWCR submission
of "Work Packages"

* Robin Bowen is currently at ECMWF HPC workshop. 

* Enda's report on UM performance have been made
available and Ilia have also submit a report
in reply.

-- It was suggested that these should be put into
    access wiki

* Mike Naughton and Tim Pugh have attended Meeting
  NCI and Fujitsu regarding system installation.

* A small "new-technology" (based on SPARC CPUs)
K machine will be made available. It is expected
to be single rack only, approximately 1/800 in size
compared to the supercomputer.

* RIKEN is one of development partner.
  A proposal for and Earth System Science workshop
  every 2-3 years was made.

9) Miscellaneous



Dynamic GCOM Selection (through UMUI)
-------------------------------------

Currently source update is required to make use
of non-standard GCOM libraries. More flexible
selection through "PRG_ENV" was proposed.


Wiki Pages.
-----------

More and more documentations are being added into
ACCESS wiki.  It is suggested that users may
be able to get automatic updates of particular
wiki page through "watchlist"
 azs note: This is available as a trac plugin
 currently not installed on access-svn.
 [ http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/WatchlistPlugin ]


Update of UM Tuning List
------------------------

- Add Ian Campbell
- Remove Enda.


Next Meeting
------------

 Proposed - Thu 11:00am, 1st November 2012


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[azs, Mon 8/10/2012] First quick draft.